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The best CEOs in our research display tremendous ambition for their company combined with the stoic will to do whatever it takes, no matter how brutal (within the bounds of the company’s core values), to make the company great.

James C. Collins

Mediocrity results first and foremost from management failure, not technological failure.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Firsts Management Mediocrity
Companies that change best over time know first and foremost what should not change.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Company Firsts Should
Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Done Involved Involves Possibly Something
Not one of the good-to-great companies focused obsessively on growth.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Business Good Great Growth
Those who build and perpetuate mediocrity…are motivated more by the fear of being left behind.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Marketing Mediocrity Motivated
The greatest leaders build organizations that, in the end, don’t need them.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Leader Needs Organization
The best CEOs in our research display tremendous ambition for their company combined with the stoic will to do whatever it takes, no matter how brutal (within the bounds of the company’s core values), to make the company great.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Humility Leadership Success
To have a Welch-caliber C.E.O. is impressive.To have a century of Welch-Caliber C.E.O.’s all grown from the inside – well, that is one key reason why G.E. is a visionary company.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Keys Reason Why Vision
Not all time in life is equal. How many opportunities do you get to talk about what your life is going to add up to with people thinking about the same question?
JAMES C. COLLINS

Opportunity People Thinking
In a truly great company profits and cash flow become like blood and water to a healthy body: They are absolutely essential for life but they are not the very point of life
JAMES C. COLLINS

Blood Business Responsibility
Genius of AND. Embrace both extremes on a number of dimensions at the same time. Instead of choosing a OR B, figure out how to have A AND B-purpose AND profit, continuity AND change, freedom AND responsibility, etc.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Business Numbers Responsibility
I’ve never found an important decision made by a great organization that was made at a point of unanimity.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Decision Leadership Organization
It occurs to me,Jim,that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don’t you invest more time being interested?” Collin’s advice from John Gardner that he took to heart.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Advice Heart Interesting
If you have a charismatic cause you don’t need to be a charismatic leader.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Causes Leader Needs
There is a sense of exhilaration that comes from facing head-on the hard truths and saying, “We will never give up. We will never capitulate. It might take a long time, but we will find a way to prevail.”
JAMES C. COLLINS

Giving Life Motivational
Whether you prevail or fail depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Failing Prevail World

The best CEOs in our research display tremendous ambition for their company combined with the stoic will to do whatever it takes, no matter how brutal (within the bounds of the company’s core values), to make the company great.

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The best CEOs in our research display tremendous ambition for their company combined with the stoic will to do whatever it takes, no matter how brutal (within the bounds of the company’s core values), to make the company great.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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